


te quiero, te amo.

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-07
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 12:01:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/674175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bart watches the stars and Jaime watches Bart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	te quiero, te amo.

From where Jaime’s standing, the transition from the future to 2012 is harder than Bart makes it out to be.

Mostly because Bart moves too fast even when he’s powered down, so you can’t tell what’s going on with him unless you look hard enough, for long enough. He races ahead of everyone else, he laughs with his head thrown back, sometimes he forgets himself and starts talking so fast it blurs into a nonsensical high-pitched whine.

So for most of the time, Bart’s his usual annoying, hyperactive self who cracks bad jokes and chews with his mouth open and fiddles with everything he ever comes across including Jaime’s hand that one time, but then there are those few times that Jaime catches him.

Like, once or twice he sees Bart’s smile falter into something soldier-like before it broadens into that sunny, blinding grin again. Sees a weird hitch in his body language. He sees Bart lost in thought with a heavy expression, but always only for a few seconds, especially if he notices Jaime watching.

Not that Jaime does that a lot. Watch Bart, that is.

Except for when he does, which is starting to become worrying, because he’s finding himself staring at Bart whenever he finds the time. Watching how his limbs blur, how his hair falls in his face as he runs, watches as he waits up for everyone else before streaking forwards.

And not just in the field- more and more often Jaime catches his eyes lingering on the deft movements of Bart’s fingers, his shoulders when he stretches, how his neck arches when he yawns. He watches when there are moments of _not-normal_ , like when Bart starts to blur accidentally, just a foot tapping, just a slip of the tongue, and has to right himself. He watches Bart yell at video games, at the controls which must have maddening reaction times. Bart, quipping at a bad guy and luring him out of the way. Bart, dragging people to safety. Bart, his eyes widening when Jaime’s mom kisses him goodnight; a short press of lips on his forehead that she then wipes away with her thumb.

So of course Jaime’s watching one night when Bart looks up and startles slightly, his breath high in his throat.

Jaime doesn’t say anything for a while, just looks at Bart and how he’s standing shock-still, arms solid at his sides. Finally, he says, “You okay, _ese_?”

He expects exactly what he gets. Another startle, a glance over his shoulder and then Bart smiles- not matching up to his usual smiles, but close enough. “I’m totally crash, amigo. Just checking out the Big Dipper. Or something.” He shrugs. “I don’t know jack about that stuff.”

Jaime nods, coming to lean against the balcony bars a foot away from him. “I could teach you, if you want.”

“Yeah?”

“My mom taught me.”

“Crash,” Bart says, and swallows, which is a tell that something’s bothering him- when he runs out of things to say, he uses ‘crash’ as every second word.

So Jaime waits until Bart’s ready to say something, or blows him off and goes inside, or doesn’t say anything at all and just keeps staring until it gets too cold.

And right now- right now, Bart actually kind of looks… young. Like, Jaime’s always known he was thirteen, which is technically skimming adolescence but to Jaime has always screamed _child_ , but it was never like that with Bart. Something about him always made Jaime second-guess himself, made him keep forgetting that Bart’s not even old enough to get out R-rated movies yet, that he should still be home worrying about acne instead of out beating up bad guys.

Which, hey, is pretty much the same definition as sixteen, but.

But. But Bart never backs down, knows tactical strategies like he was born for it, catches on to things and executes them like he’s thirty instead of thirteen. And half of the time he kids around falls into things and acts like he’s his age but _isn’t_ , and Jaime’s never understood how he can do both at the same time, act young and older than his years simultaneously.

And Jaime’s young but Bart’s younger, and somehow they’ve become best friends around that, and Jaime still can’t figure Bart out after everything that’s happened, future boy or not.

When Bart’s elbow brushes his, Jaime shifts just enough so that he can see his face.

Bart admits, “I’ve never seen stars before,” and isn’t looking at him; still has his face tipped up with something on his face that reminds Jamie of how his mom looked at Jamie’s uncle’s funeral.

And there it is, there’s the guy that Jamie only catches glimpses of, like he’s racing past at a thousand miles an hour and only pauses once every couple of weeks. There’s the guy that has seen the future and came back to the past to save it. There’s Impulse and Bart and something else altogether.

Something in Bart’s tone bluntly says, _don’t ask_ , and Jamie swallows all the questions and doesn’t, and just stands there getting cold next to him, because that’s what friends do.

 

 

 

 

Jaime’s in mid-laugh when a red light starts to blare around the base.

_Warning- unknown energy impulse detected_. _Warning- unknown energy impulse detected._ _Warning- unknown energy impulse detected._

“Whuh-oh,” Bart says, as Nightwing yells at everyone to gear up.

Bart’s expression changes when a bulky metal container starts to appear, and then changes again entirely when it solidifies and the door swings open and then there’s a girl, about Bart’s age, about Bart’s height and hair colour and bone structure and-

And, and, and. Her gaze sweeps the room for less than two seconds, doesn’t pause on Bart, and zeroes in on Jaime.

Her arm comes up, her finger on a trigger at the same time as Bart shoves his way in from of Jaime and everyone else points various lethal-looking things at the intruder.

Bart yells, “NO, DON’T,” but directs it at everyone around him before looking at the girl. “He’s not the Blue Beetle, he’s Jaime Reyes, you don’t need to-”

“What are you doing?” The girl’s face isn’t blank but is nearing it; like she wants to appear neutral but can’t stop things from seeping through. “Get out of the way, Bart.”

“We don’t have to kill him,” Bart says, with something like desperation. “We can change it.”

The girl just looks at him. Her gaze sweeps down and back up again, and her eyes flicker. It’s a moment before she speaks: “You’re serious.”

“As a heart defect.”

“Heart attack,” Jaime corrects him without thinking.

The girl looks at him, her lips tightening, and Bart’s voice is steelier when he says, “ _Lena_. Don’t.”

When the girl- Lena- looks away from Jaime back to Bart, it looks like it takes effort. “How’s that whole ‘changing the future’ thing going so far?”

“Uh,” Bart says. “We’re working on it.”

Lena rolls her eyes, and Jaime thinks she hears her huff something like, _working on it, right_. “Killing him is the only way, Bart. You know that.”

“We can change it.”

Lena raises her eyebrows. “I know we can, that’s what _I’m_ doing. What are _you_ doing? He’s defenceless right now, a bullet can reach him before his armour-”

“We can fix the future without killing him,” Bart insists.

For a second, Lena just looks at him again. Then she shifts her arm again, so it’s pointing at where Jaime’s moved, ever so slightly out of Bart’s way.

Jaime freezes and Bart’s form blurs momentarily as he needlessly uses his speedster powers to move in front of him, his feet coming to a firm stop. His body is angled so he’d take whatever hit Lena threw.

Lena’s trigger-finger stills. “ _Move_ , Bart.”

“There’s another way, Lena.” Bart is ranging from sounding like an operative to sounding like a begging kid, sometimes with elements of both, but mostly operative. “I saved Flash. The future is changing-”

The gun never strays from the target. “You really took your cover to heart, huh?”

Bart’s face sets in a frown. “Sorry if I like not having to be a soldier for once in my life.”

Lena’s grip tightens around the handle of her gun. “I’m not going to say it again. Bart. Move.”

“No.”

Lena’s laugh, when it comes, it startling. It’s hazy and jagged and nothing like Bart’s laugh which makes Jaime’s mouth tick upwards on a bad day, and it makes Jaime shudder. It’s bitter, kind of, but there’s something else, something just like Bart’s voice, like it’s been twisted out of shape.

“You’re really going to risk the future we grew up in over a _crush_?”

Bart’s throat clicks, but he doesn’t miss a beat. “Still not moving.”

“He destroyed entire civilizations, Bart.” Lena’s voice is starting to shake now, only just, and it’s tiny and full of tremors. “He _murdered_ Devon. He killed everyone we ever cared about, he nearly killed _you_ -”

Jaime watches and watches and watches and the scarab is in his head saying in that stupid, calculated tone that he should armour up, that he should terminate the both of them-

“I know he did.” Bart’s determined the way he always is, but this time it has more weight behind it. “But that was the Blue Beetle. This isn’t him. He’s different.”  
  
The scarab is yelling now, saying it would be _logical_ , it would be _prudent_ , it would be _in his best interests_ to brutally murder them, to point the gun and shoot before either of them can blink, and before he knows it he’s clearing his throat, albeit shakily.

“If I die,” he says, slow. “If-”

He breathes in. _Get it together_ , he tells himself, and ignores the scarab, and ignores the scarab, and ignores how it’s pounding inside his head-

“Will it change things? Stop the future you saw from happening?”

Bart whirls around, and Lena doesn’t lower her gun. Doesn’t shoot, but doesn’t lower it. “We can’t know for sure, but I’m leaning towards a very enthusiastic yes. And if not, then I’d like to try anyway.”

Bart snaps at her, “Don’t even _think_ about-”

“If you could kill Hitler before he started everything,” Lena says over Bart’s head, at Jaime, “you’d do it, wouldn’t you?”

Jaime opens his mouth as Bart’s hand closes around his shoulder, still blocking him. “Stop it, both of you! We’re changing it, remember? Together.”  
  
From a few feet away, still in his fighting stance, Nightwing clears his throat. “If I could just butt in- Lena, was it?”

Lena doesn’t look at him, but she nods.

“Right.” Nightwing nods back. “Well, Lena, if you try and shoot anyone, you’re going to be dealing with a lot more than one pissed off Impulse.”

“Impulse?”

“Me,” Bart says, with a hint of a smile, that smile that Jaime’s used to, the one that sets him at ease and sets him alight both at once. “Impulse. Pretty catchy, huh?”

Lena doesn’t answer. Instead, she looks from Jaime back to Bart, green eyes staring the exact same shade of green reflected back in them. The gun stays levelled at Jamie, and he can see right up the long, black muzzle of it.

“Is he worth it?”

Again, Bart doesn’t miss a beat. He doesn’t pause, or even blink. He powers right through and out the other side before it even registers. “Yeah.”

Again, Lena stares at him for a long time. Then, fast, but not as fast as a speedster, she uses her thumb to click the safety into place before shucking the gun into her jacket. “He better be.”  


 

 

She’s his twin, Bart tells him almost immediately after they take her away for scanning, and Jaime doesn’t need much convincing. She’s practically Bart, just female, bitter and more alien. Looking at how she moves makes Jamie’s skin crawl.

“Is she a speedster?”

Bart shakes his head. “Nah. I got the genes, she got the brains. I mean, I got the looks, of course-”

“You’re nearly identical,” Cassie says, bopping him on the head as he passes and ignores his indignant squawk. “That’s like calling your reflection ugly.”

She came back after nothing else changed except for Neutron- Nate, she insists, and no-one wants to argue.

“Thought someone had to be here to help my idiot brother,” Lena says, but there’s a small tick of a smile, though it’s only directed at Bart.

Jamie watches the smooth, precise movements of Lena’s hand pushing her hair behind her ear, familiar and disturbing at the same time, and has to squeeze his eyes shut for a second.

 

 

 

When Jaime goes looking for Bart, it always takes him a while. Bart gets bored easily and hates being cooped up in a closed-in space, so there’s a lot of ground to cover, but after a few hours Jaime finds him somewhere over the state line, lying on the edge of a canyon with his legs dangling.

“Hey,” Jaime says as he lands, the armour dissolving back into his skin as he does. He’s wearing cargo pants and a hoodie but his feet are bare, so the dust cakes into the flat of his feet. “Needed some space?”

Bart shifts over to give him room to lie down next to him before re-arranging his arms to pillow his head. “I forgot how annoying she can be.”

“It’s only been a week.”

“A week of _torture_ ,” Bart says, sighing exaggeratedly.

At first glance he looks normal- legs swinging lazily, limbs loose, but Jaime can hear something pinched in his voice.

“She pinky promises not to shoot you,” Bart adds. “Just- try not to go Blue around her, okay, amigo? Something tells me she won’t hold back as much if you’re all…” he wiggles his fingers. “Spikey.”

Jaime nods. “Got it. No spikes.”

They lie there, talking about nothing much, skating around the important things and dangling their legs over hundreds of meters of empty space until the stars come out. Jaime wonders if this is why Bart’s been away on nights lately- if he goes out into an open space and spends a few hours looking up.

Bart goes quiet then, saying he’s tired, and Jaime turns his head to the side and watches.

 

 

 

 

They still get some one-on-one time, even though it’s less. They still play video games and bitch about missions and watch the stars, but more and more often Jamie finds himself having to switch to one-player-mode due to Bart saying he has to hang out with his sister.

Which is fair enough, Jaime doesn’t blame the guy, but it’s hard to stay neutral towards Lena when she sends him death glares whenever he comes too close to either her or her brother.

Again, fair enough. Jaime can only imagine what’s happened in their future.

 

 

 

 

It’s quiet for a while. Low-danger missions, no-one dies, very few near-death experiences, and Jaime starts getting good scores on his tests again, much to the joy of his parents.

Tim even offers to help him study, which is- nice, because Jaime didn’t even know the guy went to high school. Which he probably didn’t, in retrospect, because Jaime doesn’t know a lot about the batfamily, but he’s sure high school didn’t factor into it much. They probably got homeschooled, or are freakily smart, or something.

Tim teaches him calculus and Jaime manages not to doze off completely, and when Bart shows up unannounced, they end up with three players in that night’s video game.

It’s quiet. It’s nice. There are exams coming up, there are essays to write, there are missions to go on and Jaime still doesn’t know what he’s doing but he thinks he’s doing okay.

 

 

 

 

It’s over in less than thirty seconds but Jaime doesn’t stop thinking about it for days afterwards.

There had been a mission- of course there had, there’s always one going on- and it had supposed to just be recon, but obviously something spiralled and Jaime had ended up flying for his life with Bart and Nightwing nowhere to be seen, Batgirl and Megan behind him and Lena half-conscious and more than a little delirious in his arms.

Batgirl had been appointed temporary leader of the mission until Nightwing got back and Jaime had eased Lena onto the ground, legs first. He had started to shift his hands towards the wound in her stomach before her eyes had snapped open.

Her scream had been enough to make both Batgirl and Megan startle, and then she was screaming at Jaime to get away from her, to not to touch her, to get away, to get away, to get-

Then Bart, streaking in so fast he appeared as Jaime was blinking back his alarm, and the scarab had started saying _the girl is alerting the enemy of our position, termination is_ -

And Lena had still been screaming, breaking off in sobs, using her good hand to try to get herself away, dragging herself up in the dirt, and Bart had been babbling so fast his words bled together:

“It’sokayit’sjustJaimeit’sfineyou’reokayhe’sfineyou’refineit’snotthebluebettleit’sjamieit’sfinehewon’thurtyouIpromise-”

Jaime had bent down to help Bart help calming her down and Lena had- Lena had _lunged_ , had cried out in pain even in doing so, had shoved Jaime’s armoured hand off of Bart’s shoulder so blood blotted it.

“Get _off_ of him-”

It had been barely intelligible through the sobs, and she had been baring her teeth like a rabid dog in a pen, like she was facing something down, and it had sounded like Bart and not like him and it shook Jaime to the core; how someone could look at him with that much sheer force. Not just hate, but fear and rage, boiling and churning and all of it directed at Jaime’s wide eyes, sleeked in the yellow casing of the Blue Beetle armour.

Bart had caught her before she started to fall. “It’sokayit’snothebluebeetleyou’resafeyou’reokayIpromise-”

“Blue Beetle,” Batgirl had said, and it’s soft but loud enough for Jaime to hear over everything else. “Go check and see if we’ve been spotted yet.”

Jamie had stumbled as he walked the few steps to take off, and didn’t look away from Bart as he had.

Bart hadn’t looked up from his sister.

 

 

 

 

It’s a long month after that. The news starts on about some half-baked conspiracy story that they have to shut down, lots of things explode, Jaime fails a few exams and life in general hurtles along without regard for how much he can take at one time.

But eventually things quiet down and Lena starts to heal- gradually, since she’s a human with no superpowers to speak of, but she heals. Bart visits her when he can, which is mostly every few days now that things are starting to go to shit.

Jaime sneaks into her hospital room once, when he’s sure she’s asleep. Bart is, anyway, snoring quietly with his head pushed against the wall, which is why Jaime came in here in the first place.

His arm is extended to shake Bart gently awake when he hears Lena.

“Us saying ‘crash’ is like you saying ‘groovy.’”

Jaime jumps, swears in Spanish under his breath before turning to face her. She’s staring up at him with steady, unblinking green eyes.

“Uh,” Jaime says.

There’s a silence that lasts for a few seconds, neither of them looking away, before Lena’s tongue comes out to wet her lips and she drops her gaze. “He’s changed, you know.”

Jaime doesn’t need to ask who she’s talking about, but he doesn’t know what to say to that, so he keeps quiet.

“It’s not just a cover anymore,” Lena continues. “It’s like it’s always been there and he just… never got a chance to be that person.”

When she shrugs it makes her look small, makes her look like the kid she is but never really grew into.

Jaime doesn’t know what to say to that, either. “I-”

“I’m sorry I screamed at you,” Lena cuts him off, still looking at Bart, at the rise and fall of his chest as he sleeps. “I still don’t trust you, but- he does. And I trust him. So that’s enough, at least for now.”

Jaime clears his throat softly before he speaks. “It’s okay.”

“What is?”

“I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

A hint of a smile from Lena, more real than he’s ever seen her smile in his presence. “Because you’re not a complete idiot.”

“Wow, I think that was almost a compliment.”

Lena laughs, a small huff of it, but it’s still a laugh. “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, Jaime Reyes.”

 

 

 

 

Jaime says, “Tell me about the future,” quietly, but it’s loud enough for Bart to still suddenly.

For a moment Jaime thinks he’s going to get up from the ground and walk off, but instead Bart looks over at him, leaning his head sideways on his arms. “What do you want to know?”

Shrug. “I don’t know.” Another shrug. “Anything.”

Bart cants his face upwards towards the stars; the pinpricked sheet of cloudless night sky. He breathes out noisily through his nose. “Theeeere was a continuous ash-sleet?”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, hombre. And we didn’t have showers, so you just had to go around with soot in your hair all the time, it sucked.”

Jaime watches Bart watch the sky and listens to Bart tell him about the domes, about the chains, about scavenger’s rights. Listened as Bart painted a world out for him with mud caked in everyone’s clothes, ground into their skin. About Lena and him stitching each other up with whatever bandages they can manage to steal, with whatever needles they can sterilize, eating whatever and whenever they can.

Bart tries to make it a joke, tries to brush it all off and twist it into something they can both laugh at, and they’re both trying, but.

But. But Bart doesn’t even pause from his last sentence when he says, “We, uh. We always thought it was pronounced ‘Jay-mee Rays,’ not ‘High-mey Rey-ez.’” The lift and drop of his shoulder is caught in the dirt, and he finally looks over at Jaime again, meeting his eyes with a smile.  “Guess we sort of forgot about the whole Spanish thing.”

“It’s okay,” Jaime says, and it’s so pathetically inadequate he wants to punch himself.

Bart’s smile is tired, but bright. “Hey, Jaime Reyes.”

“Yeah, Bart Allen?”

Bart gestures up at the sky with a lazy wave of his hand. “Teach me about the constellation thingies?”

Jaime bites down on a smile, because that’s such a Bart thing to do after the conversation they’ve just had.

When he directs Bart’s fingers into the right position to trace the lines connecting the stars, he tries not to put too much thought into how warm Bart’s palm is against his.

 

 

 

Jaime turns seventeen with the minimal amount of celebration he can get away with while being Bart’s best friend and being the kid of his parents- both of which involve them doing embarrassing and flashy things that he doesn’t want and usually end in him hissing at them to be quiet and _dios mio, seriously, people are staring._

Bart tells them that they missed his fourteenth birthday due to him ‘forgetting to tell everyone,’ so the team waits another few months and the Allen twins turn fifteen in a room with two lightning-shaped cakes decorated in slabs of white and yellow icing.

“You know,” Bart says thoughtfully, licking cake off his index finger, “I never thought I’d turn fifteen in 2013.”

Bumblebee says, “Happy birthday, kid,” and hugs him tightly, smiling into his shoulder. Then she unwraps herself from him and hugs Lena- over a year in the past will do things to you, and apparently making you less homicidal is one of them.

Bart’s gotten taller- tall enough that he doesn’t have to tip his head back to meet Jaime’s eyes when he’s in Blue Beetle armour, tall enough that he can sling his arm around Jaime’s neck easily. And broader- wider hands and shoulders and jaw and on anyone else it would be gawky, it would be awkward to watch someone grow into his limbs like that, lose the rest of his baby fat all at once like that, but Bart passes it off with his usual ineffable goddamn grace.

Later, Bart tells Jaime in a casual tone that he’s never had a birthday party before.

_I’m sorry_ , Jaime wants to tell him. _I’m sorry about what I did in your future. I’m sorry you never got to see the stars. I’m sorry you never got to meet your granddad when he was old. I’m sorry about whoever Devon was. I’m sorry you never got to listen to music. I’m sorry you never got to be a kid. I’m sorry you became a soldier so young. I’m sorry_ -

His throat is full of it, full of the unspoken chorus of _sorry, sorry, sorry_ , so instead he just claps him on the shoulder until he can say, “No problem, _ese_.”

Bart’s grin is wedged with cake. He waggles his eyebrows along with it and Jaime bursts out laughing, laughs until it hurts, laughs until Bart can’t help but laugh along with him, and Jaime wants to fucking choke on how sorry he is that Bart didn’t get to laugh like this before, and it’s all because of him.

 

 

 

Lena and Jaime start a tradition almost by accident. She had originally come over to get Bart, but after Jaime’s mom and dad had done their scarily adept parenting thing where they’re so friendly and polite you find yourself saying, _I guess I could stay a few minutes_ , Lena had ended up in Jaime’s room.

When she offers to help him with his calculus homework after half an hour of awkward silence, Jaime has to stop himself from gaping. He recovers quickly, says: “Uh, you know calculus?”

She fixes him with a look that is looking more like Bart every time she gives it to him. “I repaired a time machine. Calculus is child’s play.”

Jaime stares for a second before moving over to make room for her, and she takes the pencil he offers.

They end up meeting once a week for it, and Jaime’s teacher has started marking him with a smiley face nowadays. It’s been a while since he’s got a smiley face from his calculus teacher, so that’s nice.

“I’ve been thinking about college,” he tells Lena one day, a few months after this arrangement starts.

Her pencil pauses where it’s correcting the page he’s been writing on.

“I think that’s a good idea,” she replies after a second, and the pencil resumes.

She’s been smiling at him more lately, laughing when he tells a joke, and things have become less- strained, Jaime guesses. It’s not normal by any standards, but she doesn’t look at him like he’s a monster anymore.

Bart whines almost continuously about how weird it is that his sister and his best friend hang out, but Jaime catches the looks he gives the two of them.

Lena accompanies them on missions once or twice, taking out the bad guys where it’s needed, but it’s not a full-time thing. Jaime thinks they’re all happy with it that way.

 

 

 

Bart’s commentary on the constellations are interrupted every few seconds by the chips he’s eating, and Jaime’s drifting off when he hears Bart say, “So, a little bird told me you were thinking about college.”

Jaime tenses. “That little bird wouldn’t happen to be related to you, would she?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Bart says between crunches of chip. “Doing so would be violating the bond between siblings. Oops, I’ve said too much.”

Jaime waits a few seconds before looking over at him. “What do you think?”

“About?”

“College.”

Bart takes an extra long time on the next chip before saying, “Unless it’s over a surface I can’t run on, it’s fine by me, amigo. I’ll zip by and make sure you’re not being boring and studying too much.”

“Gee, thanks,” Jaime says, and butts their shoulders together.

Bart laughs, and Jaime closes his eyes and listens.

 

 

 

For a while, Jaime doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know who’s carrying him, who’s arms are straining with the effort, who keeps slipping in something, and his eyelids are almost too heavy to open.

He slips, and slips, and his eyes drift shut again as he loses even more time.

The next time he opens them, Bart’s face wavers into view. He tries to speak, but nothing comes out but a gush of air. Again, and it’s slow and quiet and sluggish and everything Bart isn’t.

“Why’s there blood on y’r mouth.”

Jaime’s hand is closing around Bart’s shoulder, trying to get a hold, but his fingers won’t clench.

Bart’s eyes are wide and beautifully green and they remind Jaime of fireworks. Bart’s been walking, which is weird, because he usually streaks past everyone else, and his uniform is ragged and bloody and Jaime doesn’t know if it’s his.

Bart’s eyes are blown wide and his uniform is torn to shit and his goggles are cracked on one eye and Jaime has to struggle to keep his eyes open, to keep drawing breath after breath.

“Uh,” Bart says, and he’s panting, and Bart almost never pants, only when he’s been doing things in overdrive which aren’t running, which barely ever happens because Bart _runs_ and he saves people and, and, and-

Bart says, “Uh, you kissed me,” half-distracted, his hands clenched in Jaime’s shirt to stop him from falling over, and. Oh.

Jaime remembers now: the soft, warm, bloody press of it, the sharp intake of breath that wasn’t his.

He thinks he makes a noise like _hmm_ and then things start to fade again, and he kissed Bart so that means his mouth must be bloodier than Bart’s is to get all that blood on his lips. There’s a voice in his head saying _internal bleeding_ , because his mouth doesn’t hurt and that means that he’s choking it up, and the voice isn’t the scarab because it’ll never be the scarab again, not ever, because he’s-

Rebooting-

_Internal bleeding_ , he thinks to himself, and Bart has to shake him, and Jaime’s not even trying to hold himself up anymore, it hurts too much. A distant, steady, heavy throb that beats somewhere near his gut.

There’s blood, and it’s everywhere, it’s over Bart’s mouth and oozing over his hands and that’s not from kissing them, and there’s blood in the footsteps behind them and matting Jaime’s hair and-

And Bart’s talking, Bart’s babbling, and Jaime’s smiling, because it’s reaching the point where he can hardly understand Bart and he’s always loved how Bart did this, how he-

“-holdondon’tdiefuckpleasedon’tnotyouJaimeJaimeJaimepleasefuckpleasepleaseohmygoddon’t-”

He’s trying not to vibrate, Jaime can tell. Bart vibrates when he’s stressed, even if it’s just a pen he’s fiddling with, and he can feel the beginning of it pushing all over him, where Bart’s holding him. It warms him up where Bart’s touching him, skin to skin, even if there’s blood making it slippery.

“-there’sonlyanothermileleftpleasedon’tdieIneedyouweneedyoudon’tdont’tdon’tIneedyou _Jaime_ -”

There are stars out tonight, and Jaime would trace them with his fingertips if he could lift his hand. He’d point them out and see if Bart remembered them, and they’d laugh and Bart would tip his head back because of it and Jaime would watch the smooth line of his throat, the clarity of his eyes. The stars are out and Jaime’s blinking slowly at them and it’s all in slow-motion and Bart’s voice is throaty and cracking through the middle as he’s saying Jaime’s name over and over.

Jaime says something back to him. He feels himself mumble something more than he hears it, and he thinks it’s important so he says it again, and it’s getting hard to talk over the blood.

He says it again and he doesn’t know what language it is anymore and his eyes are closing, it’s too much effort keeping them open, and Bart shakes him and shakes him and his hand slips and Jaime’s slipping, slipping, slipping, and it’s warm where Bart touches him, it’s always warm where Bart touches him-

 

 

 

For a while, Jaime doesn’t know where he is.

His eyelids are still heavy, like someone’s put great big stones on them and he has to ease them open bit by bit. He remembers something about Bart’s voice, panicky and loud in the quiet, but he can’t remember what he was saying.

There are voices above him, a low buzzing that grows when he blinks, and he blinks again and the voices separate.

Nightwing yells at him first. Yells about how he’s stupid and it was dangerous and what the hell was Jaime _thinking_ , dismantling the scarab by himself, he could’ve _died_.

Then his parents, with the same kind of gist to it, and Cassie slaps him on the back of his head before hugging him and Bumblebee cusses him out before doing the same thing.

And it goes like that, on and on and on until only Bart and Lena are left, and for some reason Jaime’s hands keep shaking.

Lena squeezes one of his shaking hands before she goes, glancing back at her brother before closing the door behind her in a way that makes Jaime frown.

“Hey, amigo.” Bart takes a seat by the top of the bed. “You crash?”

“Totally crash, _ese_.”

“Crash,” Bart says, and his knee is moving up and down so fast it’s nearly vibrating. “Just a huge freaking knife through your stomach, but hey, no big.”

“You’re speaking like it’s the nineties.”

“So I missed a few decades, who cares?” Bart’s knee is still going, and before he knows what he’s doing Jaime is reaching out to still it.

Bart looks down at it, at Jaime’s hand on his knee, and Bart stops vibrating his knee and Jaime takes his hand back at the same time.

Bart takes a few seconds to look back up at him again. “Hey, uh, what do you remember?”

“You aren’t gonna yell at me?”

Bart shrugs. “Aw, come on. You’re all doped up on morphine, where’s the fun in that? I’m going to wait ‘til you’re able to yell back at me.”

“Can’t wait.”

“You bet,” Bart says, and he’s doing that thing where he’s faking normal to the point where it becomes freakishly abnormal. Jaime watches as he takes a breath. “So, uh, what _do_ you remember?”

“I.” Jaime doesn’t want to say it, in case it’s a fever dream. “Um. It’s all pretty hazy.”

Bart’s fingers are tapping now, clicking on the bedpost, and Jaime lifts up a hand and stills them, too. This time, Bart catches his hand before Jaime can shift it back.

“You said something,” Bart says, and he’s looking at Jaime like he’d rather be staring at a wall, and there’s a flush in his cheeks that Jaime’s only seen a few times before. “Just before you passed out.”

Jaime remembers. He remembers his mouth forming the words but he doesn’t remember what the hell he _said_ , and oh, god, what if-

Jaime swallows. “And?”

“It was in Spanish,” Bart says. “I had to Google it. I got the spelling wrong, like, a billion and three times, but, uh.”

The hand on his softens its grip slightly, and then Bart’s darting forwards, nearly quick enough that Jaime doesn’t feel the kiss he presses against his mouth before Bart’s sitting back, his cheeks on fire.

“Love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Kate, who sucks and got me into the fandom and the ship. /shakes fist


End file.
